July 2nd, 2009 12:01am
Heaven Is Yours Where I Live
R.E.M. “Letter Never Sent” (Live in Chicago, 1984)
Like most everything else in the R.E.M. catalog, I have already written about this song. The thing is, even if you’ve decided very long ago to like a piece of music, it may not mean very much until some aspect of it somehow resonates with the circumstances of your life. This is the case for “Letter Never Sent,” a perfectly lovely number that I had always classified as a relatively minor album track, and still kinda do — obviously, I think very highly of a great many R.E.M. compositions. Either way, listening through the bonus live record with the new reissue of Reckoning, the song caught me by surprise. “Letter Never Sent” has a light, sunny bop to it, which serves to understate the loneliness at its core. It’s a song about missing people, and wishing that people could just be with you whenever you want them around, even as you come and go as you please. The line that rings out for me the most is in the chorus: “Heaven is yours where I live.” Well, yes, of course it is! Even if it’s a bit condescending, it’s always true from your perspective. Come here and make me happy, and of course you’ll be happy too! Ha, maybe that’s why Michael is knock, knock, knocking on wood.
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7/2/09 8:22 am
The earliest REM is easily my favorite…this is a traveling song…I put it on a mix tape between Buffalo Springfields “On the Way Home” and a real spanking Buddy Holly insturmental called “Holly Hop” to close out side one…
7/2/09 9:35 am
“Camera” is like that for me, too. It meant nothing to me until late one night, while I was driving, and WHFS (the old, independent HFS) tried to play “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville,” but the CD skipped, so the DJ said “that one’s not working, so let’s just play this one.” So, absurd as it sounds, it felt as though this was happening for me, and me alone. Before that night, the whole “when the party lulls/if we fall by the side/will you be remembered?” business meant nothing to me, and the “bartered lantern borrowed,” and the idea that you are somebody’s camera, somebody’s capturer of images. But at that moment I got it, and even now I get chills.